


Take Me to Wife

by ladyjonquilinthenorth



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 06:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11549439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyjonquilinthenorth/pseuds/ladyjonquilinthenorth
Summary: When the liege-lords and bannermen to House Stark find out that their king is not who they thought he was, a solution is suggested in the hope of restoring peace among his subjects.





	Take Me to Wife

When the letter arrives, she is standing on the covered bridge looking down at the combatants training in the yard, her kingly brother at their head. Petyr is beside her, continuously whispering, whispering. He does this on a daily basis. Finds her here, as she stands today, and attempts to sow the seeds of doubt and discontent in his Lady’s ear.

The maester, his long chains clinking above the boisterous chatter of the men below, hands her the rolled up parchment, all black and musty from its long journey through the winter winds, with a “A letter from Castle Black, milady”. He bows and retreats back indoors before she can utter her thanks.

Petyr doesn’t bother asking permission. He all but grabs the parchment from her hand and proceeds to unroll it, preparing to read. She lets him. After all, the man has no idea of the fate that awaits him when she tells Jon just what his pretty picture entails. Sansa can practically hear the man’s breath leave his throat as the king deals him a hearty blow to the abdomen, and she can’t help but smile.

He looks at her with a glint in his eye Sansa needs no help deciphering.

“Brandon Stark is coming home.”

____________________________________________________________________

Bran Stark is pulled through the gates of Winterfell on what seems to be a fur rug, aided by a dark haired girl who introduces herself as Meera, of House Reed. They both look cold, hungry, and extremely exhausted, so once all reunions and introductions have been completed, Sansa dispatches the both of them to hastily prepared chambers while she cries tears of joy and relief into Jon’s chest. He holds her, taking a strange comfort from her sobs, _delighting in the feel of her in his arms,_ and yet he can’t help but think of those who should be sharing this moment with them.

_Father, Robb, Arya, Rickon, Lady Catelyn._

And the tears continue to roll, unbidden, from his eyes.

____________________________________________________________________

The news, when it comes, is as much a shock to Jon as it is to the lords now seated in the hall. Several faces have gone white with- is it disbelief? Fury? Excited murmurs pass through the cavernous room.

_And then the shouting begins._

“A Targaryen cannot be trusted!” and “The North remembers!” and some, shockingly, “Death to the dragons!”

Jon doesn’t know where to look- cannot look, at the lords and ladies blatantly calling for blood. His blood, he realizes with a slight quiver. The feeling is still raw, he can’t quite grasp that he isn’t living in a dream. _A nightmare._

When Bran broke the news last night in the king’s solar with both Sansa and Meera present, Jon had to grip the nearest chair back to keep himself from falling over. Him, a _Targaryen_? The son of the Crown Prince and the woman he thought, until now, to be his aunt? Among the jumbled thoughts and startled gasps, two words  pass with utmost clarity through his fogged mind.

_He lied._

_My father lied to me. My entire existence is a lie. He betrayed me._

He catches a strange expression on Sansa’s face as she retreats in haste to her chambers, not stopping for so much as a “good night”. One of clarity. Relief. Decision.

Neither of them knows sleep that night.

Now, standing in the place reserved for the Lord of Winterfell, Jon feels an intruder. An alien. _A traitor._  

Three short raps on the table in front of him jolt him back to reality, and before he can turn to the origin of the noise, Sansa is rising to speak.

“My lords and ladies, if I may, a suggestion” she begins in well-bred tones and Jon catches that self-pleased look that he has come to know and love, that look that screams _Sansa._

Relief floods him at her words. She can be so infuriating, this sister-no, _cousin_ \- of his and yet, Jon knows that without her political knowledge, neither they nor their bannermen would be sitting here inside Winterfell’s walls with direwolves emblazoned on every fabric surface to be found. It is she now that demands attention from the very same lords who were calling for his blood mere moments ago. She has mesmerized them with her calm, collected manner. She has mesmerized _him._

“I propose that a marriage takes place”

____________________________________________________________________

Within a fortnight, all arrangements are made, all plans are set, and Winterfell is gearing up for a royal wedding, a celebration the likes of which has not been seen in these parts for many a year.

Jon cannot stop marveling at Sansa’s quick thinking. The son of Rhaegar Targaryen is to marry the remaining daughter of Eddard Stark, thereby neatly securing the North under Jon’s rule with a Stark queen at his side and the support of the lords at his hearth.

It startles him that instead of disgust, he feels a shy pleasure rise up in him at the thought of his bride-to-be. It’s almost stamped down, _the way he is accustomed to doing, for so many moons,_ before he remembers that they’re no longer brother and sister. _Not anymore._

____________________________________________________________________

The letter that bears news of the Dragon Queen come ashore sends a frenzy through the keeps and corridors of the frozen castle. She summons the King in the North to treat with her on Dragonstone, immediately, or he shall suffer the less formal attentions of her “children”.

“Take me to wife, Jon Snow”, she says in the godswood where he retreats to brood over a further course of actions, and kisses him shyly on the lips, _the way she dreamed of doing, for so many moons._ He tastes like comfort. 

 

 _And home_.

 

The home she hasn’t stopped envisioning from the moment her father rode south for the last time. The home she is rebuilding with him by her side. The home she hopes they will fill with children in possession of his raven curls and her Tully blue eyes, who will play at Knights and Maidens in the castle yard and build fortresses from snow.

 

And now he must leave to face the queen in the south. His _aunt,_ she remembers with a jolt. The Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, or so the letter proclaims her. And Jon will journey to parlay with her in the hopes of destroying the ever-looming threat to the north.

He will be killed, she is sure of it, and yet, when he gently pulls away and whispers, his voice hoarse with longing, “I will return to you, my Sansa, I promise”, that is all the assurance she needs.

 

“Take me to wife, Jon Snow”, she says once again as they stand before the godswood in a hastily arranged ceremony the following day. They murmur the ancient words as Bran looks on with a fierce pride on his countenance and Petyr sulks in the back, _his customary place,_ a sullen expression on his once-handsome face.

 

Jon removes her cloak of grey and white and drapes his dragon length over her shoulders and when she leans in for the kiss, the gesture is anything but _traditional._

 

“Take me to wife, Jon Snow” she says a third time when in the privacy of the Lord’s chamber he takes her into his arms and makes her so in more than just name.

____________________________________________________________________

His bedraggled entourage rides through the gate on skeletal horses barely able to trot. They are mostly skeletons themselves after moons spent defending the Wall, now just crumbling ice, and the realm, a crumble of ashes, yet Wintefell stands. Frozen, impoverished, proud. _Unbroken._  

 

And there stands his lady wife. His Queen. His wishes and hopes and dreams made flesh. She has hurried out at the news of his return, her ladies around her, a heavy cloak wrapped around her shoulders in haste, her copper tresses billowing in the late winter wind. She is cold, she is thin, she is exhausted, she is _beautiful._

 

He dismounts his horse in a blur of tears, makes the short crossing to where she stands, and before he knows it, she is in his arms, sobbing into the hollow of his neck, covering in kisses every inch of his exposed skin, rubbing her cheek against the full growth of beard on his. Nothing exists in his world besides her sounds of joy and the hot tears turning to ice in the frozen air.

 

The moment is disrupted when Sansa pulls away, her hands still on his face, blue meeting grey. “Jon”, she whispers, her voice filled with tears.

 

It is only then that he notices the tentative handmaid approaching them, a fur-wrapped bundle in her arms.

 

“Jon”, she whispers again, “come meet our son”.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and as this is a first for me, I would be really happy to get some feedback!


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